(1) Field of the Invention
[Technical Field]
The present invention relates to a vehicle body structure of an autonomous traveling vehicle, in particular relating to a vehicle body structure of an autonomous traveling vehicle that travels on wheels attached to the chassis.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
[Background Art]
Conventionally, there has been a known autonomous traveling vehicle that has two wheels arranged in the longitudinal direction on each side, the two wheels being coupled by a drive transmitting means to drive.
When the drive system of such an autonomous traveling vehicle is configured to use an endless belt as a drive transmitting means, replacement of the endless belt has to be done by dismounting the drive unit from the chassis and disassembling the unit to take out the endless belt. This process needs very complicated tasks including detachment and attachment of the drive unit and disassembly and assembly of the drive unit, making maintenance extremely difficult.
As a prior art technology to deal with the above situation, there has been a disclosure as to improvement in maintenance of a crawler type driving mechanism having crawlers that are arranged in the longitudinal direction or the vehicle and transmit drive similarly to the endless belt. In this mechanism, the crawlers are configured to be removable from the vehicle chassis to thereby achieve improvement in maintenance (see Patent Document 1).